Seth Meyers looks at controversial voter ID laws in America and finds that they don’t stop voter fraud – which doesn’t exist, but they do stop the elderly, people of color, students and low income people from exercising their right to vote.
Alabama is typical of over 30 states that will, or are in the process of implementing voter ID laws that affect hundreds of thousands of people. When lawmakers tell you outright that they don’t know there is a problem with voter impersonation, you have to assume they’re keen to legislate voter ID laws for some other reason. Why could that be?
After closing down several DMV’s, and limiting the hours that others are open, officials made an effort to reach the people who have made heroic efforts to register. Mobile units were sent out, scouring every hill and abandoned coal mine…But still they could only reach 29 of the 250,000 disenfranchised voters. An official shrugged, explaining; ‘You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” This is true, particularly when you move the horse trough to the next county. With only 57% voter turn-out before the new ID laws, lawmakers might have just ensured a win for Donald Trump.
Seth Meyers observed; “we shouldn’t be making it more difficult for elderly people to vote, especially when those people had to fight for the right to begin with.”